Basics
Class: C/X-type asteroid
Location: Outer main belt
Orbit length (approx): 5.56 years
Discovered: 21st June 1906, 23:13 UTC, from Heidelberg, Germany, by Max Wolf
Notes: Mean radius of about 36.5km.
Events at time of discovery:
- June 21 – Birth of Grete Sultan, German-American pianist
- June 22 – Birth of Billy Wilder, Austrian-born American screenwriter, film director and producer
- June 24 – Birth of Pierre Fournier, French cellist
- June 26 – The first automobile Grand Prix is held in Le Mans, France.
Naming information
Name origin: Germanic goddess associated with water and wagons.
Mythology: Only priests were allowed to touch the cart of Nerthus, which was kept in a sacred grove on an island. When the priest found her to be present by the cart, it was drawn along public roads by heifers; everywhere it went celebrations took place. During the procession, no-one went to war, and all iron objects were locked away. According to Tacitus, when the procession was over the cart was returned to the island and, along with its contents and covering cloth, ritually washed by slaves in a secluded lake, in which they were immediately afterwards drowned.
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| Nerthus, illustration by Emil Doepler (1905) depicting the procession of the goddess. |
Astrological data
Discovery degree: 10+ Capricorn
Discovery Sabian: A Large Group of Pheasant on a Private Estate
Discovery nodal signature: Virgo–Aries
Estimated orbital resonances: Venus 1:9, Mars 5:13, Ceres 5:6, Jupiter 15:7, Saturn 16:3, Uranus 15:1
Discovery chart details: New phase chart, right after the New Moon, with both luminaries in anaretic Gemini apart by only a few arc minutes (also sextile Juno). Nerthus was square Sedna. Mercury was trine Saturn, Mars opposed Uranus, and Jupiter conjoined Pluto fairly close to the lunation, with Vesta on the Ascendant squaring both. Chiron opposite and Pallas trine the North Node. Big presences in Gemini-Cancer and Pisces.
Summary
May refer to a threshold or portal leading into unknown territory; liminality, transition or complex states; hidden implications; emotional responses or communication, perhaps leading to greater maturity.
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| Discovery chart for (601) Nerthus: 21st June 1906, 23:13 UTC, Heidelberg, Germany. |